I have installed LR Classic on my iMac and also, as allowed, on my MacBookAir (MBA). I use an external drive for all my Lightroom masters and the catalogues when using my iMac. If I move this external drive to my MBA, LR opens and performs immaculately. HOWEVER, I want to clone the external drive attached to my iMac and use the cloned external drive on my MBA (so my partner can also see our pics when I am on the iMac). I have done this by using Chronosyncing from my iMac drive to another external drive. It has to have a different name for the copying operation. I then take the cloned drive to the MBA and rename it to the same name as my iMac disk so that it is seen as the same by the MBA and LR itself. Sometimes it works on the MBA, but sometimes LR says there is an error and will not open the catalogue on the cloned external drive now attached to the MBA. Is there a solution to my need: i.e. cloning an external drive to use on the second computer?
Just Rename the second external drive to the same name as the first, original external drive. Do the renaming on the MBA.
Never heard of chronosyncing. But I have used Carbone copy cloner and SuperDuper before and I don't recall having to have the drive named diferently. But it has been a few years since using those 2 programs.
I have a further problem: when I open LR on my MBA, using the cloned external drive, all the folders appear, but in grey with question marks. Despite that I can still view the photos.
What can I do to un-grey the folders? Help will be much appreciated!
PS I used Chronosync software to clone the disks. I have the CarbonCopy sw too . Might that give a better result?
The cloning software is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the name of the cloned disk must be exactly the same as the name of the original disk. And exactly means exactly, even the same capitalisation. You can do this manually after cloning if the cloning software does not allow this. Or fix the greyed out folders each time: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/
There is another possibility, but that requires a re-arrangement of your image folders. If the images are in a folder (hierarchy) that is inside the catalog folder, then the name of the disk is no longer relevant. That means that you can have different disk names as required by the cloning software, and still have no problems with missing folders. You will have to 'relink' the folder after you moved it (as described in the link I gave you above), but you'll only have to do this once.
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